BALEARIC Island consumer authorities have opened a case against Ryanair for its customer service telephone line being a premium-rate 902 number.
Spanish consumer laws stipulate that all helplines for 'essential' services, such as telephone and internet companies, electricity and gas, must be free of charge, and for all over services may not cost more than the 'basic' tariff.
This means they may cost no more than a standard call to a mobile phone and should, ideally, be a national number with a prefix that allows users to identify where in the country it is based.
National calls are often free of charge on mobile or landline packages, but where they are not, their tariff is very low.
Numbers starting with 902, among others – as opposed to 900, which is a free-phone line – carry a higher cost, which is the case for Ryanair's customer service line from Spain, 902 05 12 92.
Expats wanting to call Ryanair and speak in English generally have to ring their UK or Irish numbers, costing even more.
No email address is available on the site and emails sent to customers generally come from a 'no reply' address, although the website does have a 'chat box' option.
This means following up complaints or claims can be nearly impossible without making expensive phone calls.
The 902 number is also used for bookings and post-booking enquiries.
FACUA-Consumers in Action in the Balearic Islands has filed complaints to governments in 12 of Spain's self-governing regions, rather than to the State, given that the airline is domiciled in the Republic of Ireland.
Already, in January, Ryanair and another 19 airlines were reported by FACUA for breaking the law by only having customer service lines with high-cost numbers or with a foreign prefix, such as 0044 for the UK.
FACUA has been running a #Stop902 campaign on Twitter to allow customers to report this type of abuse, and around 100 companies have been the subject of complaints.
They include electricity and gas companies, insurance companies, shops, telecoms firms, the post office – Correos – including its fast delivery holding, Correo Express, and the national rail board, RENFE, which changed its 902 enquiries line in July in accordance with FACUA's request.
The association recalls that back in November, the attorney-general of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), Maciej Szpunar, stated that high-tariff customer service helplines were illegal throughout the Union.
Anyone who wants to get through to Ryanair's customer service desk via email and is not getting a response can use the email address cswebform@ryanair.com.
Recently, the low-cost carrier's operations director Michael Hickey resigned after thousands of flight cancellations were announced for the next few months because of a mix-up in the annual leave calender.
Hickey was the main man behind scheduling pilots' holidays, and had been doing so since 2014, although changes in the law recently meant the annual leave calendar was forced to change, from its existing April to March, to January to December instead, meaning holiday allowance for this year had to be somehow squashed in before December instead of up to the end of March – a situation that would have resulted in too may pilots being off work and flights being intolerably late.
Company chief executive Michael O'Leary said in a press release that Hickey, who joined Ryanair in 1988 as an engineer, had 'made an enormous contribution' to the company, particularly in terms of 'quality and safety' in operations and engineering.
O'Leary said it would be 'difficult to replace' him and that he was relieved Hickey had chosen to remain with Ryanair as a consultant to help with his successor's transition.
